The Painter’s Chair

“I am so hackneyed to the touches of the painters pencil, that I am now altogether at their beck … no dray moves more readily to the Thill, than I do to the Painters Chair.”

–George Washington, May 16, 1785

An eloquent new look at the beginnings of the American republic—through the portraits of its most indispensable man, George Washington, and the painters who defined him.

Howard’s narrative traces Washington’s interaction with Gilbert Stuart, Charles Willson Peale, John Trumbull and other artists, while offering a fresh and intimate portrait of the first president. The Painter’s Chair is an engaging retelling of how America’s first painters toiled to create an art worthy of the revolutionary republic—and of the hero whom they turned into an icon.